Are B-Schools To Blame? - Forbes.com

Are B-Schools To Blame? - Forbes.com

Intelligent Investing Panel
Are B-Schools To Blame?David Serchuk,
05.04.09, 04:00 PM EDT

Business schools are catching a lot of flak during this financial meltdown. But did the schools fail, or was it the fault of the firms that took these students?

Excerpts:

not everyone accepts the idea that business schools are to blame. Anant Sundaram, a professor of finance at Dartmouth University's Tuck School of Business, says that in his classes and the school, real, useful fundamentals are not only taught but emphasized. "What we witnessed in the capital markets violates Finance 101 ideas," he says. "Things like value comes from real assets, not shuffling pieces of paper. If you think arbitrage opportunities are to be had, think again. We teach a lot of skepticism."

If this is so, how can Sundaram account for the spectacular failure of so many former B-school grads? He says that once they graduate, students often get sucked into the murky world of Wall Street, where risk and reward are divorced, and no one cares about anything as long as assets rise. "This is a Wall Street crisis," he says. "It's not chief financial officers that have caused this crisis, this is a small group of paper shufflers." Of course this fails to address the issue of where these paper shufflers came from.

Read full article: http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/04/business-School-wellington-intelligent-investing-rankings.html

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This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.